We knew kind of that an announcement of this kind was coming. Back in July, Dan Hesse had teased us face-to-face with the promise of a “great story q4 around 4G,” and now the time to inform that tale has arrived. At its strategy event today, Sprint finally went public with plans to “simplify its network” by converting its CDMA 1900MHz holdings and LightSquared’s 1600MHZ spectrum (“pending FCC approval”) to LTE, an industry favorite . Helping the operator make that transition is the swathe of 800MHz spectrum it reclaimed from the, now defunct, iDEN push-to-talk network — which were a drain at the company’s resources. This spectrum, acquired from Nextel, might be phased out by mid-2013 and rolled into LTE. The corporate plans for a rapid deployment of this new 4G, with the 1st LTE markets and handsets to hit in mid-2012 with the total rollout mostly completed by 2013. Current subscribers signed up for WiMAX plans will not have to fret as their devices will remain supported throughout 2012.
Beginning tomorrow, Sprint’s consolidating its 4G LTE (including LightSquared), 3G and Direct Connect networks into one single architecture. The entire major technical milestones, along with test calls and field integration, have cleared their hurdles and work on over 22,00 cell sites are currently in process. Samsung, Alcatel Lucent and Ericsson have partnered with Sprint to put in Multimode 3G and 4G base stations to address the network’s future traffic. Prospective iPhone 4S users at the network would be in a position to reap the benefits of better signal strength and improved voice service as Sprint intends to also offload the latter onto 800MHz.
Expect a steep “reduction in roaming costs” and deeper penetration inside the operator’s expanding national footprint over the process the following two years. Naturally, LTE speeds would be significantly improved over the currently in-use WiMAX. By the top of next year, Sprint aims to have a combined WiMAX/LTE population coverage of 176 million — with 123 million covered by LTE and 76 million overlapping both. When the network build-out is almost complete in 2013, the corporate must have over 250 million blanketed in LTE, far outstripping the stagnant 120 million served by WiMAX.
…Developing
Sprint launches New Ventures arm, adapts ID and Zone apps for foreign markets
Proton and Yes team as much as offer Malaysia’s first 4G-connected car, promise more to return
